Egg on face for lefty sites: Fake Bachmann story tricks ‘progressives’, but they slam her anyway

8/5/2014

In another case of an Onion-imitating outlet successfully spreading fake news, far-left websites have been forced to retract a bogus story involving Michele Bachmann.

Over the past two weeks, more than one parody site has run a faux story asserting the Minnesota Republican has called for prison labor camps in border regions which have seen an influx of “death train” refugees. In exchange for enslavement, they’d be “fast-tracked for citizenship”.

Apparently without checking into the report’s origin, a number of major left-wing sites ran with it, only to have collective egg on their faces when it was shown to be clearly made-up.

The National Report, where this seems to have originated, went as far as to interview “opponents” of Bachmann’s supposed plan:

During an interview with Minnesota’s Twin Cities News Talk, Bachmann revealed her plan while addressing the border crisis. “I’m calling on all of us, Obama and Congress and everyone, to chip in and build special new facilities… `Americanization’ facilities, if you will. And we’d send these kids to these facilities, in Arizona and Texas and wherever else. And we’d get private sector business leaders to locate to those facilities and give these children low-risk jobs to do. And they’d learn about the American way of life, earn their keep, and everyone wins in the end.”

Conservative radio host Jason Lewis asked Bachmann about the camps, and what life might be like for the children sent to them. “Well, we’d of course want these facilities to be ideal, you know, for the children to work and learn. They’d spend half of their day working, and the other half learning what every child should learn, and that’s English, you know, English and American history. And as soon as they learn English with some degree of fluency, they can attend local schools, maybe with a voucher program, or something like that. And then they could work when they aren’t in school.”

“I think this is a great way to bring businesses into the Texas and Arizona areas, and maybe other states struggling with low employment opportunities, thanks mostly to Obama’s policies,” Bachmann continued. “Once these kids grow up, they’d leave a big gap of new job opportunities, and that’s what this is all about. It’s about opportunity, not just for these kids but for the American people. It helps the businesses, and if we can raise fifty-thousand God-fearing, English-speaking Americans, who understand real American values, then I’d say it’s a job well done.”

Some have voiced concerns with Bachmann’s plan, however. “She wants to create Republican indoctrination camps and force these poor children into lives of indentured servitude,” posits documentarian and activist Jose Antonio Vargas. “She’s talking about labor camps where we raise an army of future Republican voters, and work them like slaves until they get old enough to possibly deport, if it comes to that. No one should be taking anything this woman says seriously.”

From there, KCTV-7 News, another parody outlet made to appear as a television station’s website, re-posted the hoax.

While the left-wing Think Progress handled the issue appropriately, issuing an apology, retraction and strike-type reprint, elsewhere, it was a different story. Crooks and Liars, another large “progressive” site, also retracted the story but took the opportunity to trash Bachmann’s character anyway:

Karoli’s endnote: Yeah, I got pwned. How sad is it that it was just this side of realistic enough to believe in the first place. When you have a reputation for making outrageous and ridiculous comments, it becomes easier and easier to believe something that should have been dismissed out of hand.

At Business Insider, which called attention to the hoax, a reporter is awaiting a response from Bachmann.

But with many “progressives” still under the impression Sarah Palin thinks “I can see Russia from my house”, does the truth really matter anymore? These have a way of taking on a life of their own.

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